Police Charge Prison Inmate In Escape Try

March 26, 1985

BELLE GLADE — A convicted murderer who hid for two days in the mucky passageways beneath the Glades Correctional Institute was charged Monday with attempted escape and jailed in Palm Beach County Jail.

Modesto Perez, 22, who was serving a 10-year term for second-degree murder, was caught by prison guards as he crawled toward the compound`s outer fence late Friday night, according to Randall Music, superintendent of the medium- security prison off U.S 441.

Music said Perez faces up to 15 more years in jail if convicted on the escape charge.

``I had three officers on their hands and knees looking under the walkways for him all day on Thursday,`` Music said. ``Out here in the muckland, the ground gives way and there`s three- or four-foot cave-ins. He was hiding down there. My officers spotted him at the edge of the fence about 10:23 p.m. Friday.``

Music said Perez ``looked pretty bad when we found him,`` but did not require medical treatment.

``He could have lasted for maybe another day,`` Music said.

Music said Perez is not the first inmate to use the underground passageways in an escape attempt.

``About a year-and-a-half ago, three others tried,`` he said. ``They also got caught.``

Perez was sentenced in November 1983 for the May 5, 1983, slaying of John Thomas Van Wormer, a Broward County savings and loan vice president, who was walking along Fort Lauderdale`s East Las Olas Boulevard.

Perez did not do the shooting, but drove the car from which his friend, Emilio Jesus Moya Rodriguez, shot Van Wormer.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.